


No Man's Land

by ClockworkCourier



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Porn, Blind Character, Body Horror, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Frottage, M/M, One Shot, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 19:10:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7373950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkCourier/pseuds/ClockworkCourier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Where he walked was neutral ground. It had been for as long as he could remember. It was one place guaranteed never to be touched by the world and all its complications. Free of Overwatch, of the UN, of the IJC, of Talon, of any organization that might be concerned about the occupants otherwise. This was that narrow swath of land between the trenches, the terra nullius, the land that belonged to no one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Man's Land

**Author's Note:**

> Life milestone: first fic I've ever posted on AO3 that completely earned it's E rating in one go. Alriiiight team. B) (I'm not kidding. I've never posted a porn fic in my entire life.)
> 
> Mostly, I want these losers to make up and be happy or something. My life is ruined by fictional dads.
> 
> I spent a few hours hammering this out, so hopefully y'all like it. I'm gonna go take a shower and go to bed and maybe consider absolving my sins or something. <3

Gabe could barely remember the last time he had driven down the road, but even though he knew it had been over a decade, everything about it was almost intimately familiar. Every bump and dip, the sight of dust being kicked up behind the truck, the crooked mailboxes, it was all like a muscle memory. He could still remember where the worst potholes were, and he dodged them without thinking about it, but then he _did_ think about it, and he found himself hating the idea. It shouldn’t have been so familiar, and he shouldn’t have been there in the first place. But all of the ‘shouldn'ts’ didn’t cancel out the reality of it, which was that he was on what was once considered sacred ground, and that he wasn’t turning around and going back the way he came, dropping off the stolen truck back at the roadside diner off the highway, and disappearing once again. No, he pressed onward, past half-bent mile markers and cornflowers.  
  
The Indiana countryside had never changed. It seemed as still as a statue, hyper-resistant to the changes that the rest of the world went through. The road had never been paved, and the farms hadn’t accepted a single adjustment to the way things had been done. It was the same sight no matter where he went, and where he drove now was no different. Still the same burnished-gold wheat fields wavering gently in the wind, and the same shambling red barns with flecked paint and missing roof shingles, and the same farmhouses with wind chimes and flower baskets. This little corner of the world remained as it always had been, and it just seemed suitable, because Gabe was coming back for the same reason he always had.  
  
He counted the three rust-colored mailboxes and the lightning bolt decimated stump of a tree before he turned right on a narrow driveway. The path was almost completely covered in high grass, almost obscuring the two deep tire ruts that led up to the farmhouse. Gabe pulled up to the garage, which still had an ancient netless basketball hoop hanging on by a nail, just as the garage door still had a tiny faded American flag sticker up in one corner. It was strange to find familiarity in things that seemed so small, but Gabe felt a deep-set twinge somewhere deep inside of him when he saw them. When he killed the engine, he had to sit there for a moment, staring at the steering column like it would provide him some great answer to a question that rested on his lips. He sat until the cool of the air conditioning wore off and the deep July heat started heating the truck. Sweat beaded on his forehead and his upper lip before he finally moved.  
  
The question burned in him as he shut the door behind him, and it kept burning as he stood beside the truck, looking at the farmhouse and all of its familiarity and every nuance. The suffering potted plants on the plain concrete porch, the cracked white lawn chair tucked beside the chimney where it was out of the sun, the house numbers beside the door with rust marks dripping below them like raindrops, the half-cracked living room window with the same baby-blue curtains wavering silently in an unseen breeze. It was all the same, all perfectly preserved like it was in a jar of formaldehyde, like years hadn’t passed and left the former occupants as bullet-riddled, scarred, horrifying shadows of their former selves. It made him angry, and he had to clench his fists to keep himself grounded.  
  
_Why am I here?_ The question kept burning, stewing in him and around him, clinging to his skin like sweat, coming up under his cells like the black smoke that he had tried to keep contained since he arrived at the diner that morning. Now, with no cover to keep, he let it go. His cells immolated themselves, scorching white-hot inside of him, using that supernova momentum to recreate what they had lost, over and over and over, until the byproduct of the whole cycle burned off of him in thick, black clouds. He felt like an omen as he walked up the shattered concrete steps, hating even the way he recognized the half-assed repaving job from sixteen summers ago. Death coming to the door of a farmhouse in Indiana, like some horror movie cliche. It was the barest strands of self control that kept him from smashing the glass door to pieces and breaking down the wood behind it.  
  
It was unlocked, of course. No matter when he had come to the house, the door had never been locked; a perpetual welcome that was never worn out. Even after all he had become, even after death, the door was still open. He walked in, muscles tensed and coiled for the moment when the sacred aspect of the house would be null and void.  
  
Where he walked was neutral ground. It had been for as long as he could remember. It was one place guaranteed never to be touched by the world and all its complications. Free of Overwatch, of the UN, of the IJC, of Talon, of any organization that might be concerned about the occupants otherwise. This was that narrow swath of land between the trenches, the _terra nullius_ , the land that belonged to no one. It had been agreed upon years ago, _decades_ ago that wars and politics couldn’t be conducted or spoken of. This was practically a safehouse, and as if held by some sacred binding law, the rules were always respected.  
  
Nothing else had changed about it. It still had the same hideous compacted brown carpet, the same matching set of rocking chairs, the same outdated television set, the same musty-clean smell of detergent and age. As he walked from the living room to the bedroom behind it, a familiar path walked so many times that there were permanent footprints on the floor, he felt like the ghost he truly was. He felt detached from his body, a separate entity from the metallurgical smoking remainder of the man who had died in Switzerland. He walked as the ghost of Gabriel Reyes, former senior officer, former commander, former hero, former _human_ , going along that same path to the same room, with his intentions almost completely intact. And if he turned the corner into the guest bedroom--  
  
Part of him expected that aspect of the house to stay the same. He expected a younger Jack Morrison, still sunshine-blond with eyes wide and blue like the open Indiana sky, with that smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose brought out by hours in the sun, and with the same wide grin he saved for Gabe and Gabe alone. For some reason, that Jack felt like a static entity of the house, immutable and fixed for good.  
  
And it was that part of Gabe that jerked at the sight of Soldier: 76 rather than Overwatch’s young strike commander. He still sat on the edge of the same bed, with its Amish-designed blue and white quilt and carved headboard, like all of Gabe’s memories could recall. But he was older, haggard and exhausted and looking so utterly _done_ with everything in the world that it was any wonder he hadn’t just fallen asleep where he sat. His hair was white-gray and receding a little, his eyes were cast over like mist and staring without sight at a spot on the floor, freckles had given way to deep scars that distracted any other attention, and his expression was flat and empty.  
  
Neither of them spoke immediately. Jack just kept his head down, knees spread apart and elbows resting on his thighs, his hands loosely crossed in front of him. Gabe stared at him, not as Reaper to Soldier: 76 would on the battlefield, but as Reyes to Morrison, trying to reason out what he was seeing compared to what he remembered.  
  
“Gabe,” Jack finally said. His voice was gravel-rough and deeper than Gabe ever remembered. His name was said like a tired afterthought.  
  
And it managed to kindle something inside of Gabe that he didn’t remember feeling. What happened after Switzerland had burned so much of him out, like one great cleansing fire. What it left were the charred remains of things he had felt before, and the acute sensations of anger and hatred and that lust for revenge that he had developed. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t seen Jack plenty of times before that moment, locked in their shotgun-pulse rifle combat that didn’t seem to end. It was just that it was the first time he had seen Jack like this, in place of all the memories he had saved inside of himself like a time capsule. Soldier: 76 didn’t belong in his memories of that house, just as Reaper didn’t belong. It was all dissonant and terrible, and Gabe wished they had burnt out that part of him as well.  
  
“You look like shit,” Gabe replied. As far as greetings went, it was lacking, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. Really, by all accounts, he should have taken the rare opportunity to kill off Soldier: 76 once and for all and rid himself of what was a persistent problem. But there was that echo of sentiment in him, the same thing that stayed his hand with the reminder of _not in this house._  
  
“Yeah, well,” Jack grumbled, turning his head slightly in Gabe’s direction, his misted eyes still cast downward. “I’d same the same, but...” He shrugged, and Gabe wondered if Jack’s visor was nearby.  
  
They really were a pair of wrecks, like unfortunate casualties that just hadn’t been buried yet. Not that people hadn’t tried, because they certainly had. Gabe had seen Jack’s headstone and memorial at Arlington, back when he still believed in the possibility that Jack really had been killed. And he knew that Jack had found out one way or another that there were autopsy reports out there, informing the world that Gabriel Reyes had died of severe trauma and blood loss after two attempts to resuscitate him. As far as the other knew, they were speaking to a corpse.  
  
Gabe moved all the way into the room, standing close by the bed but not sitting down.  
  
Jack spoke again, his voice a low rumble like oncoming thunder. “I wondered if you’d come back.”  
  
“So, you waited?” It came out sounding like a joke, but there was some reality to it.  
  
Jack sighed, and shrugged again, and Gabe could see the scarred corner of his mouth twitch up in the ghost of a smirk. “Yeah, I guess I did.”  
  
There was no use in asking how long. The answer wouldn’t matter. What mattered is that they were both there, enemies and rivals and shadows of what once was, making their way through dozens of scattered memories of being in the same place in the same positions, but with far different results. And it would all go back to the question about why they came back. What was left in that house for them? There was nothing to take and nothing to gain. There really was no reason at all to come back, but they were there anyway, virtually wordless and left wondering if there had definitely been some mistakes made along the way.  
  
Sentiment should have been a shadow of an emotion to Gabe, but it remained, manifesting as something painful. It made him finally sit down on the edge of the mattress, hearing that familiar creak and feeling the edge give a little under his weight. Jack adjusted accordingly, leaning away from him just a fraction. Still, he didn’t act as if he was sitting next to the man that had just about killed him, and vice versa. He acted like there was a comfortable distance between them, like they were still partners.  
  
And combined with sentiment, it just made Gabe angry.  
  
“What the fuck are we doing?” he asked, _demanded_ , his hands on his lap gripping the fabric of his pants.  
  
Another shrug. “Your guess is as good as mine,” Jack said, and it pissed Gabe off to hear him be so nonchalant.  
  
Or maybe he was pissed because he just didn’t know. There was nothing sensible about coming back. He didn’t have anything left, and that much was even more obvious when he looked at Jack, blind and scarred and aged decades when there had only been six years.  
  
But there was that traitorous part of him, the part that was bedfellows with the remains of sentimentality, that reminded him of the one thing that caused him to go to Indiana at all, to steal the truck, to drive down all the roads and streets ingrained in his mind, to open the unlocked door and go to that bedroom.  
  
_Because you loved him,_ it whispered. _You still do._  
  
It wasn’t the same, he tried to retort. There was barely anything left of what once was. Yes, he admitted it to himself that at one point in his life, he loved Jack Morrison for everything the man was worth and more. He loved the private only-for-Gabe grin, the sunshine and blue sky coloration he had, the smell of earth and air on his skin, the sound of his voice in a dozen different tones like first thing in the morning, right before sex, right after, when he was excited, when he was distressed. Gabe loved all of those things about him, until he couldn’t anymore.  
  
_You still do_ , it repeated, and he _hated_ it. No, he didn’t. He _couldn’t._ He hadn’t been able to since the two of them brought down the headquarters at Zurich in a fight that leveled more than just a building. Even before that day, all of those feelings had waned ( _burned_ ) when Jack was promoted to strike commander. When the echoes in his head started growing louder and louder, telling him how Jack had done all of it on purpose just to make himself look better, how Gabe was qualified, but Overwatch wanted their nice, pristine posterboy and Gabe didn’t fit the type, how Jack had...  
  
How Jack had left him behind.  
  
And now it all seemed so empty, to be as angry as he was and had continued to be. All he had to do was look to his left, to see the shell of Jack Morrison, like a forgotten relic showing all its age and erosion. It came with a jerk in Gabe’s chest to think of it, to associate the man beside him with the man he had chosen to hate with every cell of his that died and was reborn and died again. Soldier: 76 wasn’t that Jack, and the traitor in Gabe’s head started to insinuate that maybe, just _maybe_ , that Jack had never existed at all.  
  
Because when had Jack ever actually faltered? Yes, he was the boy scout that Gabe always teased him about. He had this wide-eyed idealism for so long, even when the corruption started to seep in at the edges like black mold, trying its damnedest to taint Overwatch’s golden boy. It succeeded, in the long run, but it left Gabe to wonder if he had had a hand in accelerating that decay; if Blackwatch’s influence was a parasite left to run wild, consuming the agar left out for it without an autoclave to immolate it. That had never been his mindset, but sitting there with the results of the fallout was enough to get the proverbial gears turning. At the end of it all, the remains weren’t in Arlington or in some medical facility in Zurich or on Angela’s table. The remains were sitting in a tiny farmhouse in Indiana, considering their own silence in two different ways, wondering and searching for answers to questions they couldn’t bring themselves to ask.  
  
He wondered what Jack was thinking, if maybe his mind was following a similar path. Gabe wondered if Jack blamed himself for all of it still, since apparently he carried his guilt enough to refuse to come back to Overwatch after Zurich, to abandon his own name and identity, to become a vigilante after spending decades being the golden, shining example of all that was good and righteous and just. It couldn’t have been easy, and what ever he carried on his shoulders was enough to make him do all of that and more. Gabe couldn’t guess at the weight, but he wondered if it was similar to his own.  
  
But what was he supposed to do? The two of them weren’t the sort of men to just roll onto their backs and beg forgiveness. There was nothing left to apologize for. The damage had been done and continued to _be_ done with every day that passed. It manifested like the smoke that still came from Gabe’s cells, and in how Jack couldn’t see the smoke to begin with. What was there to say?  
  
He wanted to say Jack’s name, but it felt like a painful admission packed into one syllable. At the same time, he wanted to curse it. There was still so much anger boiling inside of him, not easily dissipated in the matter of minutes spent at a farmhouse. So much of him wanted to take Jack by the shoulders and tell him how much agony he was in, to tell him about his unlife after Zurich, to tell him how betrayed he still felt, how _wrong_ it all was that Jack could continue to live and be respected and loved and admired and Gabe had to stay to the shadows in life and in death after. He wanted to describe how he looked to Jack, how there were days when the effects of his resurrection got so far out of control that he could see his bones beneath the shadows like some botched x-ray, how his sclera turned black and his irises burned red like hot coals, how it took the most monumental effort just to look _normal_. And all of this because of their fight, because they couldn’t just negotiate at a table like the had done for years.  
  
Because--  
  
_Fuck._  
  
Because Gabriel Reyes missed Jack Morrison with every cell in his body like he was missing his other half.  
  
He didn’t realize how tightly he was clenching his fists until he saw the smoke rise from his palms, filling in the spaces clawed in by his nails. Jack hadn’t moved an inch, that same relic or statue, and it brought to mind the thought that it was like he was cursed like in some old Greek legend. Like the weight of his own guilt had frozen him solid, turning him into stone.  
  
And Gabe couldn’t take another second of it.  
  
His smoke moved first, moving towards Jack like it sought him out. It moved over his skin, unseen and unfelt like always, ghosting crow-black over silver hair and silver scars, gentle in the touches it never made. Then, Gabe moved, his still smoking hands moving methodically slow until one rested over one of Jack’s. That caused Jack to jerk minutely, probably out of surprise rather than anything else.  
  
“Gabe?” Jack managed, his voice somehow even rougher than it had been before.  
  
“Just--” Gabe cut himself off, turning his body to face Jack better. His other hand moved to Jack’s jaw line, and he could feel the places where his mandible had been surgically repaired. There were replacements under the skin, metal fused with bone and cartilage, and he felt the barest ridge of it under his fingertips. “Don’t fuckin’ speak,” he finished, his own voice sounding like it was seconds from failing him.  
  
Jack obeyed, or maybe he didn’t want to speak at all to begin with. He just held still under Gabe’s hands as they moved over his skin, over prosthetics and cybernetics, all the repairwork that had been done to try to piece the golden boy back together again. His hands and fingers moved over the scars, especially the jagged one that went up between his eyes and onto his forehead. It came with a memory that hadn’t been burned away, and Gabe could still feel flecks of hot blood on his hand as he all but wrenched the flesh open with the edge of his army-grade knife.  
  
It struck Gabe as odd that they didn’t find a way to replace Jack’s eyes. The visor, he supposed, was the answer to that. But he could see the milky quality of the corneal abrasions that seemed to cover the entire pupil. His pupils were fixed open, just the barest slivers of blue around the edges, and the irises themselves were ghosts of something else.  
  
And then it occurred to him that it wasn’t fair that he was able to feel Jack’s face like he was relearning it, while Jack simply sat with his hands in his lap. Gabe’s hands went down to grasp both of Jack’s, ungently pulling them up until his fingers rested on both sides of Gabe’s neck.  
  
There was the barest edge of rage to Gabe’s voice, simmering low but still present. “Feel it,” he ordered. “So you know.”  
  
The look on Jack’s face was enough to tell Gabe that he understood. There was a slight pinch in his brow, and the barest downturn of his mouth. His fingers, however, weren’t hesitant. They moved up onto Gabe’s face like he was reading it, moving over the scarred width of his bottom lip, across his cheekbones carrying deep crevasses from every wound he had ever sustained that wasn’t able to heal, to the crease and bump of his nose that never was properly repaired from being broken in a training exercise gone awry, to his eyelids, which dutifully closed under the ministrations.  
  
And then Gabe felt when Jack’s right hand moved to the area just under Gabe’s ear, where the cells immolated and restored themselves too rapidly for the moment, making the flesh incorporeal. Jack flinched when he felt bone, his hand drawing back a fraction.  
  
“ _Christ,_ ” he breathed.  
  
Gabe didn’t say anything, knowing that Jack wasn’t going to completely draw away from him until he was satisfied that he had felt everything there was to feel. Jack’s hands, with all their callouses and scars, moved effortlessly across the rest of his face, to the back of his head, back around to the front where they drifted over the junction between his neck and his shoulder. There, his hands stayed, a warm, rough weight against Gabe’s skin.  
  
There was another long silence, spent with Jack breathing a little heavier, his eyes fixed shut, his head lowered, like he was trying to process what he had felt.  
  
“I...” he started. He raised his head a little, and Gabe could see the beginnings of a weak and forced smile. “I think I liked it better when I couldn’t see you.”  
  
Gabe raised an eyebrow despite himself. “What, so you didn’t have to know what happened?”  
  
“I still don’t know what happened,” Jack answered, and there was nothing but honesty in his voice. “I remember the building falling, and then...”  
  
He didn’t have to finish that. Gabe knew their experiences differed, but correlated at that point. Darkness on both sides, the feeling of death creeping into them as something cold but oddly merciful, the deep, abiding understanding that it was very likely that everything was set to end at that moment. Where they took Jack, Gabe didn’t know. Where they took Gabe was just as unknown to Jack.  
  
“Ask Mercy,” Gabe said, and the sneer in his voice was apparent. He felt Jack give a start at that, his head tilting up a little further. There was a question written across his face. Gabe decided that he didn’t like it. “Not now,” he added, one of his hands betraying him and working its way up Jack’s forearm. The muscle there hadn’t waned at all. If anything, he felt stronger.  
  
“So, what is this?” Jack asked. His voice sounded strained, and if Gabe didn’t know him better, he would think Jack actually sounded desperate. “We’re both here, we’re busted all to hell and would probably be better off dead. What are we supposed to be doing?”  
  
Like hell if Gabe knew. His mind was a ship caught in the worst kind of storm. Everything swayed and rocked and felt like it would be smashed to pieces against an unforgiving shore.  
  
“What do you want to do?” he heard himself say. It wasn’t what he meant to say, the same way he had wanted to say all sorts of things just moments ago.  
  
Jack seemed to watch him, clouded eyes fixed on Gabe’s face, on his scars. He saw him the same way he saw _through_ him. “What do _I_ want?” he returned, and Gabe felt his hands form something like a gentle grip against Gabe’s neck. It was a gesture less damaging and more possessive, a gesture they shared more as young men, before their respective and shared worlds fell apart.  
  
_Yes,_ Gabe wanted to say. _Tell me._  
  
But the words never made it beyond the knot that seemed to have formed in his chest. They stalled there, painful and uncomfortable in turns. Then they were completely silenced when Jack moved closer in the span of a second, his lips pressed hard against Gabe’s.  
  
Jack’s lips were chapped and dry, but just as warm as Gabe remembered. He could feel the edge of a scar on Jack’s upper lip, the same way he knew Jack could feel the gouge on his lower. Their scarring didn’t stop them, and what concerned Gabe more was that he didn’t stop the act in its entirety like he should have. But it was another situation of ‘should have, shouldn’t have’, and Gabe was still failing it. More than failing, really, as his hands moved from Jack’s arms to his shoulders, to his back, down further until he had pulled Jack close, until Jack’s arms were looped around his neck and Gabe was pulling him down onto the bed.  
  
Everything needed to stop right then, the same way that Gabe needed to turn to smoke and phase through all of it, to get as far away as he could from Jack, from the farm, from Indiana, from every fucking reminder of what had been and what could be. But they weren’t stopping, even as one of Jack’s hands moved up to the side of Gabe’s face, where the bone was tangible, and his thumb brushed over the divot of his skin and his zygomatic arch. It didn’t stop when Gabe’s left hand moved up to wrench his fingers in Jack’s hair, still impossibly soft like he remembered. And it still didn’t stop when Gabe was the one to push his tongue into Jack’s mouth, filling the near-silent space with wet, half-obscene noises as he relearned every bit of Jack that he had forgotten.  
  
It was sheer goddamn _madness_ , and Gabe couldn’t control it once it was set on its own course. They grappled with each other in a combination of experience and the stuttered fumbling of grappling teenagers just touching each other for the first time. Gabe couldn’t hold back the strangled sound in the back of his throat as one of Jack’s knees pushed up between his thighs, pressing hard against his groin. He returned the favor by moving one hand up under Jack’s shirt, and then down to the one spot near Jack’s tailbone that he remembered as a pressure point. Gabe gently pressed on it, and was instantly rewarded with a low moan that Gabe felt in his own mouth, and he silenced it by kissing Jack harder and swallowing up the sound.  
  
He didn’t want to remember the places he knew made Jack react best. The tops of his thighs, the backs of his knees, the soft spots under his ear, the way he would keen in sheer pleasure when Gabe would hook Jack’s ankles over his shoulders, when he would get just the right angle to turn Jack into a boneless mess of a man. And he didn’t want to remember the strange, fond warmth that would spread through him seeing Jack completely undone, not the upstanding, painted figure on all the posters or the unquestionable authority at the head of a negotiation table, but Jack Morrison, farm boy from a virtually unknown town in Indiana, able to be defeated purely by Gabe’s knowledge of his body.  
  
But his memory and his sense of sentiment overruled anything else Gabe wanted at that moment, and he found himself wanting Jack to get closer, to somehow bind the smoke-burnt cells of Gabe’s body with Jack’s, to repair every wound that could never have been healed by the fucked up science that somehow kept him alive. He wanted so much more of Jack than Jack could give. All he could do to get that feeling across was to kiss him harder, to pour all of that anger and frustration and need into a kiss so hard that it would bruise, that it would tear the scar tissue and make Jack bleed fresh. He could hear Jack grunt at it, but he didn’t move away. Jack’s hands kept their grip on Gabe’s face, not shying away from the bones or the constant deconstruction and reconstruction Gabe’s body put him through. He was taking Gabe as he was, and Gabe returned that in spades.  
  
He managed to pull away long enough to admire what he had done. Jack’s eyes were closed, his lips injury-red and parted slightly to draw in desperate breaths.  
  
“What the hell are we doing?” Jack just managed to say, his eyes opening halfway like he expected to gauge Gabe’s reaction. But Jack didn’t sound angry, or really anything other than amazed, in awe of what they were doing after they had spent so much time trying to destroy each other.  
  
“I don’t know,” Gabe replied honestly. He didn’t. He didn’t know why his body was moving independently of his mind and making him grasp for memories that really should have been tossed aside years ago. “Just...” Just _what?_ What could he possibly demand of Jack now?  
  
_Fuck me. Take me. Do something with me, you asshole, because we don’t have that much time left._  
  
That was right. Everything was so tenuous, and it was a matter of a countdown now. They would leave the house as enemies again, and there would come a point in the near future where Gabe would have to attempt to kill Jack again, and Jack would return the assault. No one would be the wiser as to what happened between them, and for that matter, few would even know who they really were. It would definitely cause a stir to see the ex-commander of Overwatch fucking the fallen former head of Blackwatch, or for the tables to be turned on the matter. Then again, it would cause a stir for anyone else to know Gabe’s true identity, or Jack’s. Very few people were privy to that information, and after today, nothing on that front would change.  
  
But that meant nothing between the two of them. Gabe was still Gabe, and Jack was Jack. They knew more about each other than they probably had a right to, and to let the other in so close was beyond dangerous. It was a situation left completely unchecked, and it would undoubtedly fuck with their future in ways they couldn’t predict now. Gabe would have to look at Jack in his visor and his jacket with his new identity, and he would still know that he loved the man underneath all of it. He wondered if Jack felt the same, and then he suspected that yes, he did and he would.  
  
For the moment, though, there was no thinking that deep. They pawed at each other, mindless to the stifling July heat or the irritating creak of an ancient bed or the summer-soft song of the crickets in the grass outside. It was all irrelevant information, existing outside the impenetrable realm they had built for themselves. Only the two of them existed, and Gabe idly thought that maybe their cells _had_ fused together like he wished, as he suddenly felt like they weren’t two separate entities, but one existing in two bodies, the way they had when they were younger. They moved, mindful of what the other wanted without anyone having to say a word. They kissed each other breathless, their hands moving in ways Gabe could only think of as choreographed, as Jack’s hands moved down to the waistline of Gabe’s pants, working them down lower and lower on his hips. They were loose enough then to push down to his knees, and then his hands came back up so his fingers could run along the elastic edge of his briefs.  
  
Gabe did the same with Jack, in the back of his mind finding it somewhat funny that Jack still wore a pair of worn-soft Levis like the farm boy he really was. He unbuttoned them, unzipped, and slid them down until Jack kicked them off without ever having to lean away and pay attention. Even more amusing was the recollection of the first time they had tried the same thing, fumbling in the dark with their foreheads colliding and having to stop because they were laughing too hard to continue. Now, it was as effortless as a well-rehearsed dance, just as much muscle memory as taking the road to the farmhouse required.  
  
Jack’s hands moved down under the hemline of Gabe’s briefs, brushing against the narrow strip of skin between where the line of his hair ended and his dick. Gabe was already half hard, and it took a good degree of self control not to just outright rut up against Jack in order to speed things along. Gabe was always the more impatient of the two, as Jack delighted in prolonging things for sake of pleasure or for his own amusement. Even all those years later, the same seemed to apply. Jack’s movements were all methodical, his fingers trailing one way, and then another, down all the barely-touching edges until Gabe was nearly worked into a frenzy, manifesting his impatience by biting down hard on Jack’s lower lip, causing Jack to let out a hiss of pain before he broke the kiss.  
  
“Easy,” Jack murmured, amused, his voice low enough to send something like a shiver through Gabe.  
  
“Get it over with,” Gabe snapped, and made his point known by pushing his own briefs down to where his pants were at his knees. It was like all of his training was fading away by the second, leaving him feeling scorched and furious at something out of his control.  
  
Jack just lowered his head so his lips were pressed against Gabe’s neck. “You make it sound like this is a chore,” he said, before he gently bit at his skin, right over Gabe’s jugular.  
  
“It’s gonna be if you don’t fuckin’--”  
  
But he didn’t get to finish his sentence, as Jack’s right hand moved down and wrapped around Gabe’s cock in a move that was surprisingly fluid. Gabe’s next word caught in his throat and faded out with a strangled gasp, followed by a less sharp, “Fuck you.”  
  
“That’s the plan,” Jack replied, unable to help the grin that quirked at the corner of his mouth, seeming to stretch a scar there. He worked Gabe up until he was completely hard, his thumb coming up just under the glans in a motion that was both repetitive and oddly gentle. “When did you get so mouthy?” he asked, his hand moving in practiced strokes.  
  
Gabe thought he was going to scream in frustration. Smoke poured from his cells, darkening the room. “Is now really the time to _ask?_ ” he retorted, and he groaned when Jack just smiled.  
  
Apparently, there was a change in plans, and Gabe had one lightning-quick frustrated thought as Jack pulled his hand away that it was in punishment for not answering him correctly. His thoughts were silenced when Jack reached up and removed his own briefs, kicking them off as well so that he was naked from the waist down. Then, he moved himself upwards between Gabe’s legs until their hips were pressed together, Jack’s cock a heavy, warm weight against the jutting bone of Gabe’s pelvis.  
  
“Gonna have to do it like this,” Jack said by way of explanation, his voice a little tighter. “Just--” He didn’t finish his own sentence as he wrapped his hand around both of their dicks, and Gabe momentarily revelled in the sound of Jack’s breath hitching.  
  
“Holy shit,” Gabe provided.  
  
“Yeah,” Jack agreed, completely breathless.  
  
It felt like the first time all over again, just as clumsy and imperfect as they tried to remember what years between them had lost. Just like Gabe remembered, it wasn’t some porno-perfect affair. No, it was messy, and sometimes Jack pressed too hard or the angle was strange and one of them would have to adjust. But it was perfect in its own fucked up way. It was just the two of them, close as they ever had been, with Jack kissing Gabe hard, moaning and shivering and trying as hard as they could to make it last.  
  
Gabe could almost imagine they were young again, treating the farmhouse like a safe place away from the endless onslaught of politics and missions and stilted, trained speech. It was the one place where they felt like they could be themselves, existing not as anyone important, but just Gabe and Jack, with their terrible carpet that needed replacing and potted plants that needed watering and their tiny plot tucked away in the golden wheat fields of Indiana where they could just _be_. It was easy to put themselves back there, to those moments when they were like this, pressed close and trying to get into each other’s skin. And it made Gabe think of some of those nights, when the moonlight was the only thing illuminating them, and they would curl up together, relishing in that skin-on-skin contact even when they weren’t making love, with an unspoken understanding that didn’t require someone to say ‘I love you’, because the best kind of love was the kind that didn’t need to be said so much as it could just be felt.  
  
He felt it now, not even in the sense of Jack jerking both of them off at once, but in the sense of just being _with_ him. They were together again for that moment, and their conflict was practically imaginary. Gabe could even pretend, just for a moment, that nothing had really happened, and that they could easily have walked back into their old life without consequence. When Gabe felt that warm sensation pooling in his groin, he closed his eyes hard and mentally pushed himself back to that point.  
  
Back to Jack Morrison and Gabriel Reyes being so fucking hopelessly in love with each other that the rest of the world could have burned away and they might never have noticed.  
  
Back to those quiet, soft moments under moonlight or sunlight, or any moment when the celestial bodies that be witnessed them making their oaths in silence, clinging to each other with the sort of desperation that would suggest that the universe itself could not shake them apart.  
  
Back to their lives before Zurich, before Overwatch and Blackwatch, before anything happened and they were just bodies of cells trying to fuse together.  
  
Gabe’s whole body felt like it was caught in one big convulsion, and he didn’t hold back the moan, the half-sob that wracked him, the movement that made him put both arms around Jack’s shoulders and pull him as close as he could, to try to meld with him as if it were possible. Even as Gabe gasped his way through the crests and troughs of his orgasm, as he felt Jack start to do the same, he tried as hard as he could to just weave himself into Jack’s very being, to make it so they couldn’t do this again. They couldn’t spill any more blood and think each other dead and have to face that future full of mourning and rage and the understanding that something was well and truly fucked up between them. He wanted to set that sort of purifying fire back into himself and torch what remained of Talon’s influence, to scrape away the black and gray ash of what was Reaper and reveal Gabriel Reyes still underneath, just a vulnerable, anxious kid from Los Angeles, trying to do his best for himself and the people who mattered.  
  
Jack was still gripping them both even after Gabe came, and he kept moving his hand until he moaned as well, lowering his head onto Gabe’s shoulder. If there were any words coming from him, they were rendered unintelligible, and yet they were set into a codex that Gabe was adept at deciphering. He knew what Jack was thinking, how the other man felt. It was a shattered mirror of Gabe’s own feelings, of that need to reinvent, or at least to uncover what they had before. Jack wanted to be himself again, but not in the sense of being Strike Commander Morrison, but just _Jack_.  
  
Gabe quickly moved one of his hands down to cover Jack’s own, matching each thrust and jerk, listening to Jack’s moans gain in volume until he crashed over the edge with a sound that went straight through Gabe’s body like he had touched an exposed wire. It was a sob and a moan, and the sound of a hitch in his breath as he tried to navigate the fields of color and light that were undoubtedly blossoming in his own head as ghosts of the sight he had lost. Most of all, at the tail end of it, there was Gabe’s name, like the amen of a prayer.  
  
They had to lay there for a moment, in exhaustion and happiness and awe at what they had done. Reality was unexpectedly gentle as it returned, reminding them in ocean wave-like turns that the room was still midsummer warm, and that they were both sweaty and covered in their own mess, with hands that would need washing and the undoubted need of a wet rag. But it all came slowly, until Gabe tilted his head to look at Jack’s misty eyes, and was surprised when the slight smile he offered was matched with one of Jack’s own.  
  
“Hey,” Jack whispered, keeping his face pressed against Gabe’s neck.  
  
Gabe just hummed in acknowledgement, his clean hand moving up around Jack’s back and neck to stroke at the back of his head. If he hadn’t felt like he needed the longest, hottest shower in the world, he would have been content to lay there like that for hours.  
  
They did lay there for awhile, or at least fifteen more minutes until the itch of dried semen was starting to get unbearable and the sweat on Gabe’s back was wicking into his shirt. He turned his head, feeling the softness of Jack’s hair against his skin. “This place still have running water?”  
  
“Mhmm.”  
  
“Good, because I need to hose this shit off.”  
  
“Okay,” Jack said, rolling back slightly to let Gabe loose.  
  
With a wry grin, Gabe looked down at him as he untangled themselves. “Not gonna join?”  
  
Jack cracked one eye open before closing it and shaking his head. “That thing’s barely big enough to fit one of us. Two would just make for a shitshow and some broken tiles.”  
  
Fair enough. Gabe reluctantly moved away from Jack, getting up and turning around to see the other man quickly settle into a half-curled position, one fist underneath the flattened pillow, his pelvis still a mess and leaving Gabe to wonder how he could stand it.  
  
Gabe padded down the hall and into the outdated bathroom. Jack was right about the shower, which amounted to a narrow glass-enclosed closet that just so happened to have a faucet and a showerhead. Two former military veterans couldn’t possibly fit in that small of a space comfortably. He cranked up the water as hot as it could go, listening to the spray pelt the glass and the tile. Heat meant nothing to him now, and scalding water was no exception. He pulled his shirt off and stepped under the spray, feeling only the pressure but not the temperature. Smoke poured in equal measure with the water in reaction to more cells dying, but Gabe found himself not caring for once. He simply scrubbed off what he had to while his mind wandered.  
  
There was the obvious, looming thunderhead of a question of what they were going to do next. Stay enemies seemed like the most clear answer to it, or one that was the most predictable. Again, a few hours in the house wasn’t enough to fix years worth of damage, both physical and mental. The most it had done (but not the only thing it had done) was prove to him that deep down, Gabriel Reyes still loved Jack Morrison more than anything else in the world. And that was bound to fuck him over in the end, or at least prove to be a nightmare crossed with a headache.  
  
Would he be able to kill Jack when the time came? Would he be able to put the muzzle of his gun between Jack’s eyes, to shatter his visor and his skull? Would he be able to take responsibility for the action that would lead Jack to be buried for good, his stone at Arlington no longer just for show and a lie?  
  
_No,_ some part of him supplied, awash with nothing but brutal, scabbing honesty. _No you fucking can’t, Gabriel, because he can’t._  
  
It wasn’t going to be the same after that moment. They could go back to their war, with payloads and missions and the young and the old working together again against enemies or old friends, but it wasn’t going to be the _same_ war. The one set to come was one Gabe didn’t know if he was ready for. It was one where Widowmaker might be the one to kill Jack, or anyone else with enough skill and enough patience. And it was one where someone could kill Gabe as well, if they found a way to get beyond his constantly dying and regenerating cells. Someone would inevitably find a way to cheat Death, and he would have to be buried and metaphorically live up to his six year old autopsy report.  
  
But Gabe and Jack could not kill each other. Maim, certainly. Injure, only naturally. Kill?  
  
No.  
  
And that was enough to make Gabe press the heels of his palms against his eyes, watching the phosphenes burst into geometric fireworks behind his eyelids, trying to drown out all the thoughts and plans he had built up over the years. All those sick fantasies of making Jack understand how pure his revenge was, and how bloody it would end; those nights of seeing a shotgun-forged blood spatter on a wall from Jack’s life abruptly ending at Gabe’s own hand. He couldn’t do it now, knowing that really, they hadn’t completely abandoned themselves.  
  
_After all he did,_ another whisper added to the swirl of half-mad thoughts in his head.  
  
_After how much he loved you,_ said yet another.  
  
_What do you want to do?_  
  
Gabe turned the shower off, reaching out and grabbing a moth-eaten towel left on the rack. He gave himself a quick wipe down before picking his shirt off the floor and walking back into the bedroom. Jack was still there, his breaths steady, his pulse almost audible from where Gabe stood. Gabe crossed the space in two steps, kneeling on the edge of the bed, water still dripping from his curls and forming little pinpoint shadows on the pillowcase as they fell.  
  
Jack opened his eyes, still unseeing, but there was a sense of understanding as if he could see.  
  
“Yeah?” he muttered, voice low and pleased.  
  
_What do you want to do, Gabriel Reyes?_  
  
Gabe leaned down and kissed him. Nothing bruising, nothing chaste, nothing so poetically massive that it could freeze the world on its axis and stop its solar revolution. It was just a kiss that meant enough to replace three words. It was soft and gentle, but deep and meaningful, and it lingered long enough to drive its meaning home.  
  
When he pulled away, he dropped the half-wet towel beside Jack and managed a smile, despite the concave depth of his face exposing his bone, or the smoke that curled up from a hundred points across his scarred skin.  
  
“Shower’s yours,” he said before sitting down on the edge of the bed.  
  
For a long moment, Jack seemed to actually _see_ him. His misted gaze was steady and fixed, like just for that second, his sight was back, not red-tinged from his visor, but the same way he had seen Gabe before, in what seemed like eons ago.  
  
Then, the smallest smile spread over his face.  
  
“Thanks,” was all he said, before he pulled himself up off the bed and onto his feet.  
  
“Need help?” Gabe offered, and he almost laughed at the incredulous expression Jack sent over his shoulder before he walked to the bathroom without another word, using the bends in the walls to guide him.  
  
_What do you want to do?_ _  
__  
__What do you want?_ _  
__  
__What are you doing here?_  
  
Gabe sat there, the smoke of his cells burning like a vigil fire, and he knew the answer.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://radiojamming.tumblr.com)
> 
> Come join me in crying about these gr8 dads because they're too much to handle rn

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] No Man's Land](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13934193) by [watery_weasel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/watery_weasel/pseuds/watery_weasel)




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